Fast Delivery of Ecommerce Orders Does NOT Seem to Work Well

It seems that everyone is ordering products (and food) online and expecting fast and good delivery of those ecommerce orders. But let me say that, in practice, our experience is that so much of the delivery process breaks down and we have NOT seen it work well.

Plus I’m scratching my head over how the economics of this shipping of everything — and its efficiency…or lack thereof — impacts profitability.

Here are a few examples which all happened in the month of December:

• THIRD-PARTY DELIVERY SERVICE: My wife orders a home office desk from Wayfair with “white glove” service (they bring it in, set it up, and place it in the room of your choice). It arrives a couple of weeks ago damaged (the corner of it was smashed) but Wayfair makes good on it and sends a second desk. When it arrives the driver doesn’t even bother to bring it in since it also is damaged! She’s now waiting for a third desk and Wayfair has lost their ass on this order.

• UPS: I order a Herman Miller chair for my home office. It arrives but is the wrong color and is sent back.

• THIRD-PARTY DELIVERY SERVICE: A heavy area rug (with dirty packaging) arrives from Hayneedle and one guy is on the truck. He tries to bring it in the house and damages three walls in our brand new house.

• UPS: I order shoes directly from Hoka One One and paid extra to ensure delivery on 12/31/18. Everything is confirmed (over-and-over again by texts and emails) but UPS doesn’t bother to show up until January 2nd. No explanation but I did get a refund on the shipping from Hoka.

• THIRD-PARTY DELIVERY SERVICE: We buy a high-end, 65″ Sony OLED TV from Best Buy. Geek Squad installers are booked for weeks so I reluctantly agree to have one of their “licensed and bonded” 3rd party installers deliver, mount and set up the TV. We pay extra for the service. One guy arrives and I ask him, “How can one guy mount this TV?” He responds, “I figure you or your son can help me lift it up.” I make him get a second guy, he waits outside for an hour, both the guys are pissed off (and make sure I’m aware of it), and basically slam the job together as fast as they can. Yes, this is being escalated to Best Buy Corporate.

• DOMINOES: Yes, this last one is a bit bizarre, but my son and I order a pizza from Dominoes for lunch yesterday and online it states it will arrive in less than 30 minutes, guaranteed. 45 minutes later Alex calls and is told “We’re super-busy and it will be there in about 20 minutes.” An hour and a half after ordering the pizza arrives. It is cold and looks like it drove around in the delivery car upside down. The Dominoes guarantee states you can get your money back if you take the uneaten pizza back to the store within one hour (the store is 20 minutes from our house) and have the receipt (it was a charge so the driver took the receipt). So the “guarantee” is basically bullshit (Our Guarantee: If you are not completely satisfied with your Domino’s Pizza experience, we will make it right or refund your money).

Must admit we’ve had many other deliveries that went well like a sofa we’d ordered, but the overall experience of delivery is not good. Perhaps it is the holiday season and more orders than usual, but that means operations people don’t have their act together and have planned poorly.

Today’s article about Target scaling up to delivering everything they sell seems exciting, but the promise of fast delivery doesn’t hold up to the reality.